Beirut – Since the assassination of the deputy head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas”, Salah Arouri, on the evening of January 2nd, questions have arisen regarding Israel’s resort to a policy of assassinations as an intelligence and security tool, in search of victory it has not been able to seize since the outbreak of the “Al-Aqsa Intifada”.
While Israeli occupation soldiers amidst the rubble of Gaza have failed to “end Hamas” as their government had promised, they have also been unable to deter Hezbollah in their northern front despite continuous threats of waging a broad war on Lebanon. Then, the assassination of Hezbollah leader and member of the “Al-Radwan” unit, Wissam Al-Taweel, on January 8th, reinforced that Israel in its “existential war” has pursued the path of assassinations, as a parallel war to its failures.
With the assassination operations against Arouri and Al-Taweel on Lebanese soil, Israel has broken the rules of engagement with Hezbollah by striking “Hamas” in the heart of the security, political, and popular stronghold of Beirut’s southern suburb, and responded to Hezbollah’s attacks by targeting its prominent operation engineers and field commanders in their hometown of “Kharbata Salam” in southern Lebanon.
Attempting Deterrence
Some believe that Israel’s strength lies in the weakness of the resistance axis, represented by intelligence-assisted assassination operations, supported logistically and technically by its allies, including satellite support. Israel has not yet received a similar kind of response to most of its assassinations of resistance movement leaders and officials.
However, observers invite a reading of history, as Israel’s intelligence supremacy has never helped it win its wars; all the assassination operations have not deterred the resistance movements from escalating, growing, and militarily breaking Israel.
Then came the events of October 7th and beyond, which observers link to the doctrine and approach of the resistance, whose leaders know they are potential martyrs, and that for every Israeli assassination, someone will succeed in leadership and in the field. Nevertheless, assassinations remain one of the strongest tools of pressure and war against resistance movements.
Targeting Palestinian Leaders and Symbols
Historically, Lebanon has been one of the main theaters for Israeli assassinations, especially during the war, due to its security fragility and ease of breach. On the Palestinian level, the first operation took place in September 1972, when Mossad assassinated the novelist and Palestinian politician Ghassan Kanafani with an explosive device in his car in Beirut. He was buried in the “Martyrs’ Cemetery,” along with dozens of Palestinian and Arab martyrs and symbols since it became an official cemetery for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964.
In April 1973, Israel recorded one of its most significant assassination operations led by its former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, infiltrating Beirut by sea to eliminate three Palestinian leaders: Mohammed Youssef Al-Najjar, Kamal Nasser, and Kamal Adwan, who were leaders of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement “Fatah” and the PLO.
Israel continued its retaliatory operations in January 1979, and after five failed attempts, assassinated in Beirut the commander of the PLO and “Black September,” Ali Hassan Salameh, known as “the Red Prince”, who had provoked controversy and concern in Israel, and married Lebanese “Miss Universe” Georgina Rizk, a year before his car bombing, and died along with four of his guards.
Targeting Lebanese Figures as Well
Israeli treachery also targeted many symbols of resistance in Lebanon. In February 1984, Israel assassinated Sheikh Ragheb Harb, known as “Sheikh of the Martyrs of the Islamic Resistance”. In December 1989, Israel raided the Lebanese Communist Party headquarters in Al-Rmeileh in Mount Lebanon, resulting in the martyrdom of leaders from the Lebanese National Resistance Front, most notably Qassem Badran and Hakmat Al-Amin (known as the doctor of the poor) and others.
In February 1992, Israel assassinated the second Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Abbas Al-Musawi, with Israeli helicopters bombarding his convoy in the south, hours after his speech on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Sheikh Ragheb Harb.
Saida was shocked in May 2006, by the assassination of Lebanese brothers Mahmoud and Nidal Al-Majzoub, who were in the military leadership of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Lebanon, with an explosive device planted in their car.
Hezbollah also has a history with Israeli assassinations with the heaviest in Syria, which provided a “safe arena” for its leaders. In Damascus, the military leader Imad Mughniyah was assassinated in February 2008, and military leader Hassan Laqqis was assassinated in front of his home in Beirut in January 2013. In the Syrian Quneitra, an Israeli airstrike assassinated a group of Hezbollah’s field commanders, the most prominent being Jihad Mughniyah, in January 2015; later, Israel assassinated the military leader Mustafa Badreddine near Damascus airport in May 2016.
In August 1999, Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Ali Dib, also known as “Abu Hassan Salameh”, by planting an explosive device in his car in eastern Sidon.
In July 2004, Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Ghaleb Awale, by detonating his car in front of his home in the southern suburb. And after 12 years, on June 22nd, 2016, the Military Court of Cassation sentenced a Lebanese man and his wife to life with hard labor, and a 15-year sentence, respectively, after convicting them of involvement in the assassination of Awale and dealing with Israel.
Expected Reaction
Currently, questions are rising in Lebanon about the implications of Israel’s open use of assassinations as a weapon. Recently, following Al-Taweel’s martyrdom, Hezbollah issued a statement concerning security gaps, warning the people in the south, stating, “The enemy continues to look for alternatives to gather information about the resistance and the whereabouts of its fighters, after losing a significant part of the effectiveness of its espionage devices due to their destruction by the resistance.”
Political writer and analyst Hussein Ayoub believes that “Israel tried to say that its targeting of Arouri was not a targeting of Hezbollah or the southern suburb or Lebanon, and that it was part of the open battle between it and Hamas, but Hezbollah deals with it as concerned with responding to the breach of red lines by targeting the Lebanese depth in the suburbs, hence the first response was targeting the Meron base in the Upper Galilee.”
Ayoub sees that “targeting resistant leaders in the south -like Al-Taweel- means that whenever the Israeli receives painful blows, he goes towards benefiting from the open field of operations, especially south of the Litani, and tries to pressure the party’s environment, conveying that his hand is long and reaches every target and symbol in the open war.”
The political analyst predicts that Israel will “continue to try to seize opportunities, just as in the Syrian field, after Hezbollah lost the element of surprise in the response in the northern front since October 8th.”
He explains that “since 2006, Israel has been trying to benefit from its failures, which were mentioned in the Vinograd Commission report, the most important being the mismatch between the target bank and the reality. It says, ‘Israel has accumulated experience in reaching its targets, benefiting from new technologies like artificial intelligence currently, and from the network of spies, and by making available to it the data of American and British satellites that do not leave the Lebanese skies, which means that the chances of excelling in some aspects cannot be denied.'”
Ayoub considers that “Hezbollah stands today in a position of attack, not defense, while Israel stands in a position of defense against our borders, with a new equation for the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” and recalls that Lebanon represents the only model in which its resistance freed the land in 2000, without conditions, and it is the one that today strikes various Israeli depths, while, in return, Israel has not dared to execute its threat to expand the war.
